~ This blog is about expats and rugs not drugs.

Street Shooter Gang

Is it time to start photographing homeless people at home so that we don’t have to come all the way to Mexico to find interesting subjects. Or do all the photography students in Mexico live in the suburbs and have never seen street people until they come to Mexico. Come to think of it, in the suburbs, the only street people there are are those who collect garbage. Perhaps this fascination with wretched of the San Miguel comes from never having seen the wretched at home. It appears that photographers like this are called Street Shooters and here an excerpt from a book Street-Shooter’s Guidebookby M. A. Saylor

Product Description
As we cross the threshold into digital photography it seems to me that the need for compositional honesty is more of an issue than ever before. Next to the snapshot, I know of no other photographic realm that lends itself to this idea more completely than those unrehearsed and spontaneous photographs made upon the social tableaux of the sidewalk.

THE STREET-SHOOTER’S GUIDEBOOK explores the rudiments as well as more than a few finer points of this type of work with topics such as WHAT IS LEGAL, WHAT IS ETHICAL, SAFETY, COURAGE, IS IT FOR YOU?, GETTING AWAY WITH IT and others. The middle part of the GUIDEBOOK is devoted to a portfolio of twenty photographs made on the street and which illustrate points in the text. In the event that the reader desires more of a disciplined learning experience the GUIDEBOOK is laid out with eleven assignments as they are given in class. Interspersed throughout the text are over a dozen student observations as they relate to “the missed shot”, as well as several essays penned by the author over the past twenty-six years and which concern street and social-documentary work.THE STREET-SHOOTER’S GUIDEBOOK endeavors on a lower level to provide the beginning street photographer with encouragement and an abundance of practical tips for working on the street undetected, including several tactics for avoiding confrontation when discovery becomes imminent. On a more elevated plane the GUIDEBOOK hopes to advance the cause and understanding of this mostly disregarded yet invaluable self-communicating art form…

Interpreted correctly or not, the truth resides upon the sidewalk

Here is our San Miguel Street Shooter in the Jardin. Without a shred of embarassment (appears the book above teaches you how to get rid of shame) our Diane Arbus wannabe decided to photograph the gentleman who chants (apparently anti Expat chants) every day in the Jardin.

Not content to merely get a shot from afar with her telephoto lens, she gets readies her camera as he gets closer. Appears that 10 feet gets the best shot.

More shots

He is watching her and still she shoots. At this point I am hoping he will use the cane on the camera.

And then she crouches to get the money shot.

This is the best shot I can get of her but will keep my lens pointed so I can a full shot of this sad little photographer.

And there are the sneaky street shooters

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7 thoughts on “Street Shooter Gang”

I never lose sight of the fact that I am guest in San Miguel. How long
I have been here is irrelevant, I am a guest here. I do not stick my
camera in the face of some poor unfortunate soul who is angry over the
fact that he feels I am ruining his town. He has a right to chant if
that is what he wants to do, he is hurting no one. and it is his
country. To say that he/she wouldn’t be surprised to see his hand come
out expecting 10p for you to take the picture, only displays a lack of
sensitivity to what is really happening here. In many countries it is
quite common to pay a person to take his/her picture as that is how
they make an income to survive. If I want to take a picture of a local
I always ask permission, or signal what I am about to do. If they give
me the nod I take the shot, if not, I refrain from taking the picture.
I have more respect for the local people wherever I am in the world.
To believe that it is okay to treat the locals this way is a blatant
disregard for the person as they now become an object to photograph
and no longer a person.

I, along with several other people, witnessed the photographer
attempting to capture this man in a photo. It was amazing to watch the
paparazzi like behavior displayed by this women. In the end we were
all hoping that he would swing that wicked cane of his, like he does,
sometimes, at the tables set up selling raffle tickets and the like,
in the jardine. I guess he decided that to swing the cane and risk
falling on his butt just wasn’t worth it this time.

Before I forget, never kid yourself, he sees everything and I mean
everything, going on around him. Just check out his eyes the next time
he walks by, they are moving very fast and they take it all in. His
physical condition can really fool you however he is not missing a
thing. Trust me, he does care for what he believes in, that is why he
is chanting. Please don’t be so insensitive.

No he didn’t even get paid and no, she didn’t even offer or even care…
she just got the shot she wanted. He didn’t matter.

Now when you talk about taking pictures of tourists, I think they are
all fair game so we took pictures of her for our own use and we didn’t
even ask. We didn’t think much of her so it felt good… gee I wonder
what she was thinking when she took pictures of the chanting old man?

I agree Babs, he is a treasure, and he is one of the many reasons I
like to come back to visit San Miguel.

This old man is a treasure in San Miguel! He doesn’t like the gringoes and he doesn’t like the signs or tables set up for charities in the jardine. He is chanting about that……..he uses his cane to knock over the signs. When in the jardine, we all wait to see what form his agression will take. And, then pick up the signs or tables he has knocked over.
The great thing is the tolerance for “different” people here………

Aren’t these types of pictures simply extensions of the Disneyland approach to other countries. He is not a paid actor like Mickey or Minnie who pose for free in Disneyland.

Perhaps that is why people in other countries who face challenges become suitable subjects for photography art. What does she think she is capturing?

Can this man care? Is he deliberately drawing attention to themselves? What sort of skills do challenged people have to control their behaviour or object?

The question I ask myself in all of this is would the photographer do the same at home or does being in a foreign country permit behaviours that would not operate at home. She doesn’t live here. She is unlikely to be challenged.

This man is a person. To stand right in front of him treats him like a door or a plant. And does giving him 10 pesos make it all right. Does poverty make everyone in Mexico for sale?

All this said, I am guilty of doing the same thing so perhaps I was throwing stones at myself except I photograph the privileged.

I have to say that I agree with Michael, if he is going to wander around in public chanting then he has to assume he will attract some attention. Could that possibly be the point even? I wouldn’t be surprised if he came over and asked her for 10p, perhaps it’s just a job.

She’s NOT a “local”! The most irritating is the group with the Santa Fe Workshop that comes into town around Semana Santa. They are SO disrespectul of the people, the ceremonies and us locals, that I’ve ALMOST stopped going down to watch the ceremonies!

He doesn´t seem to mind (or perhaps even notice) that he´s a subject of photography “art.” I fail to see the problem here.

If the photographer were doing the same with someone obviously in some sort of life pain and who clearly did not want to be photographed, who was anguished by it, well, that would be another matter altogether. Not a legal problem but a moral one.